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Comment by deweller | Hacker News Reader

Classification of the event in the headline: "Measles Outbreak"

Actual number of confirmed measles infections: 1

And diseases spread exponentially. Anything that exhibits exponential growth, whether it be disease or Moore's law, requires a different mindset

1^N is not the kind of curve most people think of when you say "exponential growth"

Edit: You people have no sense of humor.

I don't know how you came to model anything about this with "1^N" (I don't recognize that either). A nuclear chain reaction for instance starts with a single fission event, and if it's supercritical neutron population grows exponentially.

Edit: wasn't expecting idiosyncratic notation.

1^N is "1 raised to the N". The one measles case so far growing exponentially where N is the exponent. It's still 1 for all values of N though. Nothing is actually increasing even though it's "growing exponentially". There is one measles case so far. Even if it "spreads exponentially" you would still only ever have one case if you intentionally misunderstand how disease spreads and model the number of cases with the function X^N where X is your starting number of cases.

Jokes aren't funny when you have to explain them though

Except it's not 1^N. It's x^0.

Not everybody can be vaccinated and measles spreads like crazy. If there's one confirmed infection, that person likely already spread the virus for a couple of days before symptoms occur.

Besides, it's a disease that shouldn't be around anymore at all.

This is why it's a big deal.

Does anyone know the truth of the statement - infected persons have a 90% change of transmitting measles to another person. ?

edit: regardless of all the downvotes, I am glad I asked.

Measles is very transmissible. The actual stat is worse.

> Measles is so contagious that if one person has it, up to 90% of the people close to that person who are not immune will also become infected.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/transmission.html

Well, measles is extremely contagious and nowadays you can't expect that everybody else is vaccinated, so...

I'd call a single case of smallpox "Smallpox Outbreak". Too bad this recent outbreak of sheer ignorance and prejudice is going to delay a meaningful comparison between both viral diseases.

My daughter is 2 months old. The MMR vaccine is given at 1 year. Thanks science doubters for not vaccinating and putting her life at risk.

I passed it at 7 and it wasn't easy. I have personal experience of it being nasty, anti-vaxxers mostly don't. They don't even know what they're talking about because that's the whole point of their position, ignore every actual piece of knowledge about this and construct an very entertaining conspiracy that has no consequences until herd immunity crumbles. I don't even know why we're having this problem, we were on our way to eradicate measles, as we did with smallpox.

I think they have plenty of science to back their thinking. That’s the bigger issue in my mind.

Can you provide examples? The only example of a 'scientific' study I am aware of is the disgraced Wakefield stuff which has been disproven so many times it isn't even funny. That's before you add in the malpractice that happened and the conflict of interest he held.

Some people have an allergic reaction. (probably 1 in a million). That is a scientific fact, and enough for them to get a lot of mileage.

I have not looked into any of this, so I tend to think it’s probably bunk since authorities dismiss it as such. Many others, it would seem, do not dismiss it. http://adventuresinautism.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-evidence-o...

Italian researchers tested 44 different vaccines and found significant contamination in all of them, ranging from red blood cells to lead, tungsten, gold, and chromium.

The describe this finding as "baffling" and call for better purification and quality control, given that many of the contaminants were capable of causing health problems.

"New Quality-Control Investigations on Vaccines: Micro- and Nanocontamination"

https://medcraveonline.com/IJVV/IJVV-04-00072.pdf

Someone said, that Merck is being sued for constructing evidence in vaccination fraud or something.

Absolutely not an expert on this, but doesn't your daughter get the immune antibodies from her mother in the first few months? Either passed during pregnancy or by breastfeeding.

This is correct, IgG has a half life of about 21 days; generally this is good for 3 months of immunity

There's a period where immunity lapses, see: https://www.jwatch.org/pa201006020000002/2010/06/02/how-long...

I'm not actually sure why they vaccinate for MMR at one year as opposed to earlier like other vaccines. There must be a good reason.

The MMR vaccine is more effective after 12 months, i.e. there are fewer cases of the vaccine failing to confer immunity when first administered at 12 mos as opposed to earlier.

You can receive a first MMR dose earlier than 12 mos for certain grounds (e.g. international travel, military postings) but it is then recommended that the infant receive a second 'first dose' after 12 months.

IANAMD, but after looking at the vaccination plan for children last week, my guess would be that there's so many vaccines to be taken in the first two years of life that they have to sort it by priority and space out to balance risk of catching a disease with risk of overloading the body.

The evidence seems to indicate that vaccines don't cause some kind of "immune system overload". There are efforts underway to increase the number of vaccines given at a time.

https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/initiative/detection/immu...

That's good to know. Doesn't stop midwifes from scaring us into considering combined vaccines that reduce the number of injections, solely by arguing that the more injections, the less safe it is for the baby.

Immume systems are fucking amazing[1]. There are millions of viruses and bacteria of all sorts everywhere in your house and outside that a child's immune system is constantly dealing to without you even being cognizant of it. And if it wasn't dealing with those successfully you'd very quickly know about it because your child has an immune disorder. The vaccines are absolutely infinitesimally small in terms of an immune reaction compared to this every day constant barrage.

[1] Except when they're broken, and then it sucks bad, and you find out how damn amazing they are and how much we take them for granted.

Does the human body process breastmilk differently as a child? Why can’t we immunize small populations of people or animals and use their milk to spread the antibodies to young and at risk populations?

We still don't know to synthesize breastmilk, even for babies (this is why breastfeeding is reccomended).

Also, it is a relativly recent development that adult humans can even digest milk. Lactose tolerence is the mutation, and a sizable portion of humans do not have it.

Sure but if it conveys immunity to measles in a measely area, I’m sure it would be pretty easy to convince some nursing mothers to nurse longer and sell the milk.

No kidding… My son is the same age. Here in the Netherlands the vaccination rate is dropping steadily too, and now sits just above 90%. Not as bad as some other countries, but worrying nonetheless.

By the way, our kids are protected for a while yet by their mothers' immunity to measles (of course that implies mum having either been vaccinated or having had the measles themselves).

to put it in quantitative context, you put her life at risk every time you put her in a car. Measles killed roughly 500/kids a year before vaccinations. Car accidents kill about .5/1000 kids.

The probability of your child getting measles and dying is below most other risks that you take for granted each day.

You forgot to mention that there were an average 500,000 cases of measles per year in the 4 year period you're picking for the 500/year metric.

You also forgot to mention that about 1-2 in each thousand with measles developed encephalitis and 1 in 1000 developed post-infectious encephalitis and that 1 in 20 gets pneumonia.

This is not a small thing.

There is more to it than just dying.

A child being severely sick for extended periods can be really expensive. Especially for those countries like the US which don't have universal healthcare.

And of course there are long term complications that can result in children becoming deaf or having an intellectual disability: https://www.cdc.gov/measles/about/complications.html

>A child being severely sick for extended periods can be really expensive.

If we're comparing with car accidents, I assure you: Injuries from a traffic accident will in general be much more expensive than measles treatment.

This is a nonsensical comparison. There's a difference between unavoidable risks and avoidable risks.

You take steps to minimize unavoidable risks like car travel (e.g. use car seats), but it ultimately you need to travel to function in society.

Measles is a completely avoidable risk. Vaccination and ultimately herd immunity provides a 100% level of protection against measles. We were close to eradicating it.

Urbanization is a thing. We cram ourselves together more than in the 60s. Epidemics would be worse without vaccinations and other modern medicine niceties.

Suburbanization is also a thing. Urban sprawl had barely got started in the 1960s compared to now.

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